Shooting Challenge: 12 Shots Of Power... Vote For Your Favourite!

It’s Gizmodo Australia Shooting Challenge voting time! There are some amazing photos in this bunch, so start voting for your favourite photographer. They might just win a shiny new Canon Powershot G15 camera valued at $600.

Note: In the interests of fairness, voting has been restricted to one per user, based on cookie and IP.

IMPORTANT
Voting closes at 10am on Tuesday, December 18

Prizes

The Canon Powershot G15 has finally arrived, and brings with it a level of sophistication we love in the fixed lens compact space. It sports a 12.1-megapixel CMOS sensor, a powerful DIGIC 5 processor, 5x optical zoom and an amazing lens which rocks an f/1.8-2.8 aperture. It’s sleek, stylish and beautifully retro with the ridged lens hood, pop-up flash and nested dials, and it’s a winner when it comes to user friendliness.

The Canon Powershot G15 is valued at $599.95, and we’re thrilled to be giving this one away to the Gizmodo Shooting Challenge faithful for our last challenge of the year.

We’ll be running this challenge over two weeks. The finalists from each week will go head to head in the final and the winner will be selected by Gizmodo editors for the grand prize!

How Judging Works

Once again, for three weeks, Gizmodo readers will vote one weekly Shooting Challenge finalist through to the prize round to be judged and announced by Gizmodo editors on Friday, November 30.

This week’s entries close at 10am AEST on Tuesday, November 27.

‘Cars’ voting will begin at 11.30am AEST on Tuesday, 27 November, and close at 10am AEST on Friday, November 30.

Note: Linking friends from your social networks to the Gizmodo voting page is encouraged, however, use of “vote farming” sites including (but not limited to) GetOnlineVotes or links directly to polldaddy.com will result in disqualification. The goal is to grow the Giz Shooting Community in the fairest way possible.

Please be respectful and constructive if leaving a comment about any photo.

This Week’s Entries

Click on images to zoom into gallery mode, and don’t forget to scroll down to vote.

Naj Khan

Camera: Canon Powershot SD 1400
A shot of my computer monitor power button. This “power” is crucial for me to do work, so I can pay my bills.
Cropped the original and increased the contrast.

Louise Cooper

Use of power this Christmas in Matraville Sydney. Families in this Sydney suburb have put on huge Christmas lighting displays for many years. Power bills are enormous these days so, feeling the crunch of the GFC, fewer and fewer families are taking part. This image shows Trevor, Sara and Layla in front of their powered Christmas light display raising money for Sydney’s Children’s Hospital – as they do every year. This image is from a small documentary series of 12 families in front of their lit homes in 2012.
Canon 5D Mark II
EF24-70mm f/2.8L USM
Broncolor Mobil Kit, 2 heads with small reflectors and pocket wizards
ISO 100 f/11 1/5 second
8 December 2012

Yunis Tmeizeh

Canon 600d, Sigma 70-200mm, iso100, f2.8, 1/20sec
Multiple shots taken of a light bulb. From the original , shattered then burnt. The series of images were then stacked over one another. Minor colour and curve adjustments were applied
Note: Filament bulbs aren’t that readily available anymore!

Brendan Yu

Camera: Canon 5D mark III @ ISO100 f2.8 1sec
Lens: Tamron 24-70 f2.8 VI DC
Black powder stuck in a tube with a fuse to its back. When lit the propulsion explodes into the sky with enormous POWER, bursting into fragments of light and stars. Making it seem like there are little men inside showing off their pyrotechnics.

Georgina Luczi

Title: Powered Chair
I spotted this piece of art at the Power House in Brisbane. The power flowing through the chair makes for a very interesting subject.
Camera: Olympus E-PL3
Lens: M. Zuiko 14-42mm
Iso:400, f/6.3, 1/100

Chris Ball

The power button, the gentle warm glow comforts me, keeps me connected. The loss of that gentle warm glow makes me feel lost, I get fidgety, I start to look around , where is that nice warm glow, I go searching until I find the warm gentle glow, “ahhhh there you are” I say. I relax again, memorised once again by the magical blue aura, order is restored.
Shot with OM-D, ISO-200, 43mm fixed macro zoom on the 12-50 kit lens, tweaks included bumping the exposure up to bring out the blue and bit of sharpening.

Tom McQuarrie

Hiking near the North Pine Dam I came across this scene, just as the sun was setting. I like the juxtaposition between the natural landscape and the immense man made structures that traverse it.
Nikon D5100, 18-55mm VR lens.
ISO 100, 18, f/3.5, 1/500sec.
Did a bit of lightoom colour and contrast corrections.

Paljor Lama

This was taken at the Rocks Village Bizarre last Friday. The ‘Power’ theme isn’t obvious in the photo, but I liked how it related in a couple of different ways – The woman in the picture was putting on a great show that I can only describe as being powerful. I really like the gold and purple colours in the photograph created by the different coloured lights which are obviously powered by electricity. Also, the gold and purple hues remind me of lightning.
The picture was taken with a Fujifilm X100 – f2, 1/140, 23mm, ISO 3200.

Phil Brown

I have always been fascinated by the giant wind turbines that are the future of renewable energy, and in this shot I wanted to capture that future. The inclusion of the sun was also aimed to highlight the importance of solar energy as well. Two symbols of the future of power generation in this country.
Fuji X100
f/8
1/4000 sec.
ISO-400
23mm

Alex McGregor

Cut power cord from the IT workshop.
I took off my 18-55mm lens, spun it around backwards and held it while I took the shot.
Shutter speed was 1/200 and a high ISO (6400). My first attempt at macro with a reversed lens.
Enjoy.

Tim Pontin

I had been about to go to bed an hour or so previously, when I noticed that the sky was starting to light up outside. Went and stood out there for 20 minutes, then thought ‘hell, why not try some photos’. Lucky, as then this topic pops up!

I say hopefully eligible as this is actually a composite of 3 images – I set my camera up on a tripod, and started clicking off 8 sec exposures. Out of 150 odd shots, I had about 10 with lightning in them, and one where a car drove through the frame. The three shots here are car (bottom third), and two lightning flashes, pretty much split down the centre of the frame. Slight exposure/contrast/clarity/ white balance adjustments in bridge, then a 30 second layer mask in Ps.

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Discuss

Its good to see that you can't see the results anymore, it's a step forward. The first stage popularity contest is no great measurement of photographic aptitude and can give the photographer an unrealistic view of their skills. Saying that I completely understand why Gizmodo does it this way.

You have to be kidding. This competition has never been about photographic aptitude. It is a about reader's opinions. I loved the results as I could have a look at what other readers voted as favourite and often went back and checked that photo again. The editors have only made the competition less interesting.
To continue your argument, if the competition is about photographic aptitude then get professional photographers to judge. Then don't bother posting the photos, just announce a winner.

I absolutely agree with this one. It is certainly not much of a contest when someone with more facebook friends can win against a raft of better photographs. Not a fan of the voting at all. Just get one person to judge. Whatever the judge says is final and not up for discussion.

A good change away from the vote-hunters, but still a popularity contest. Would love to see the final tally at the end of it though. Would be cool if the Editors took the top 3 and then chose the best based on merit and how well it fits the brief each week though.

The fact that the voting tally is not being publicly broadcast is ridiculous. Where is the accountability, Gizmodo? How are we to know you are simply not deciding which photo you have a personal preference for? Change it back.